Stoners Guide: How to roll a “lazy joint”
Spoiler alert! It’s a Cone.
No doubt rolling joints is an art. I mean.. there are some crazy talented people out there making some amazing art pieces. @tonygreenhand comes to mind first, he absolutely blows me away again and again with the ‘smokable art’ (as he calls them) he posts on his Instagram – If you aren’t already following him, after you see these joints I’m sure you will.. I mean I've already given you the link ;)
Don’t worry though, what we’re making today won’t be nearly as hard as any of these crazy joints. When I google “How to roll a joint” I am met with many articles with step by step guides that don’t really give enough detail, some even labelling a whole step as 'roll joint'.. I mean.. that's what I came here to learn mate? So, the point of this blog is to give you as much information as I would have liked when I was first learning to roll, so, I’ll be guiding you through step by step with hand drawn informational pictures and if you stick around till the end there is a sped-up video of a “lazy joint” being made just for you.
When I first started to learn how to roll joints I was very impatient and would often just give up and let someone else do it... but as I got older and smoked more often it was about time I brushed up on my rolling skills. Rolling is somewhat of a rite of passage in the cannabis community... in fact, you are almost looked down apon if you can’t roll, but no judgements here! I’m just happy you’re trying to learn. I found rolling very difficult unless I practiced every day however, even back then, when I was just learning, I would still be able to roll what I like to call a ‘lazy’ joint any day of the week with ease.
Now as someone who smokes a few joints a day, what I look for in a rolling technique, is speed. So, I actually use a roller with the perforated straight tips on an every day basis. However, for the times where I don’t want a single sized paper joint, so maybe on the weekends when I’m being greedy hehe, I will make a coned joint as I believe it’s the easiest way to get an aesthetically pleasing, large joint – every time. So without further ado lets get into the first step.
First step is to make your tip. Now any tip will work for this but keep in mind, the thicker your tip, the thicker your cone. My personal preference for coned joints is to use coned tips which we actually stock on Smoke Milk. These tips, along with the straight tips, are pre-perforated for your convenience so all there is to do is fold them horizontally back and forth along the perforated lines (first and third sketch in picture below). Although, if you want to go the extra mile, you can pre-split the folds along the vertical axis before then folding the horizonal lines (second sketch in picture below). This technique is designed to minimise (further) any “scoobie snacks” otherwise known as little bits of herb that sneak through the filter and into your mouth.. ew!
Okay now you have your tip ready, grab your paper of choice. My favourite king size papers are the Elements King Size Rice Papers, they burn with almost zero ash, all that is left behind is the natural sugar gum that turns into caramel as it burns.
So, get your tip in your left hand, and your paper in your right, place your tip in the middle of the paper to the very left. If you’re using a straight tip then you need to angle the tip so that the paper will cone (picture below). The next step can be a little hard to grasp as you start to learn to roll, but the more you practice, the easier this becomes.
Now the tricky part, making the cone. You might be asking yourself, “wait.. this bitch forgot a few steps.. the weed aint even on the paper yet!”. Well this is where the “lazy” in the “lazy joint” comes in. If you make your cone before you put in your herb then it’ll turn out close to perfect every time and all that’s left to do is fill it (which we’ll get into).
There are a few ways I can make this joint from here, from long and skinny, to short and fat (and of course everything in between) this will depend on the angle I place the tip. I however, try to make my joints fat enough so that my funnel can fit in the end, although this isn’t necessary if you want to do a scooping method instead of a funnel, but be warned filling the cone without a funnel is a long task! Another tip for you guys without a funnel, use a piece of paper that you’ve coned out into a funnel (I wonder how many times this blog will have the word cone in it…).
So you can practice the tip placement/size of your cone before you commit to it. Once you think you’re happy, curl the edge of the left side of the paper (where the tip is placed) underneath the tip and flex out the rest of the paper by pulling it taut from the tip all the way to the right edge of the paper. Once you’ve created a closure at the tip (like in the photo above), curl the right side of the paper underneath itself, creating the cone them lick the gum line, and rotate the joint away from you, using both hands. As you rotate, the paper will stick, pushing down on the gum line again after the initial push down is advised as it actually makes it stick 3 times better than if you don’t. I do this step with the chopstick inside the empty cone. If there are any folds or bumps we can minimize them now with a poker/chopstick by pushing it inside and gently stirring it around.
Now we fill! Funnel in joint, sprinkle a pinch of herb at a time, pushing down with the poker/chopstick after every pinch. The trick for a joint to burn evenly and efficiently is to pack the joint the tightest down the base near the tip, getting lighter as we go up, by the end of the joint all you’ll need to do is tap the tip on the table to pack it down.
And of course finish it off by folding the top down into three triangles. I have tried to show you this method in the picture below.
As mentioned in the beginning of this post, listed below is a sped up video of the cone being made. First rolling the tip, then coning. The first cone made is using the coned tips and the second is using straight tips.
Voila! Joint done, time to get baked.
-Milo
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